BOSTON – It’s been a long road to the Final Four for a seemingly unlikely team. That road was also full of obstacles, as often happens.
Villanova will certainly be remembered for its great national championship back in 1985, another time when it was an unlikely team just to reach the Final Four. It’s seemingly buried in the history of college basketball, for few realize the tradition Villanova has. But the 2008-09 edition of the Wildcats, in Jay Wright’s eighth year at the helm, have brought back memories of that team now that they are headed to Detroit.
When Wright first took over the program, it was very much an also-ran in the Big East. It wasn’t like a few years earlier, when the team had the kind of talent that had many projecting a Final Four appearance or two before they would flame out in the first round or just generally underachieve. The march to improvement, and ultimately this point, has been slow and steady.
NIT bids in his first three seasons on the Main Line were baby steps, helped after his first year by a banner recruiting class. That class went through everything you can imagine – numerous injuries, a phone access code incident that saw a number of players suspended, nearly dying on a plane heading home after an emotional road win, and being a phantom travel call away from going to the Elite 8 as juniors. They went to the Elite 8 the next year before falling to eventual national champion Florida, but they weren’t forgotten in this.
“I talked to a bunch of them today and that’s what I said to them, that this is your legacy, these guys,” Wright said on Friday, before the big win.
This season, the Wildcats were picked fifth in the Big East. In a 16-team conference, that’s not so bad, but with the projections that were being made of this conference, it would have been easy to get lost there. It was essentially the same team that lost in the regional semifinals last year, again to the eventual national champion (Kansas), so there weren’t grand visions for this team.
During the season, for a while they didn’t really distinguish themselves. They didn’t get a great non-conference win, although there were some good ones. They were highly ranked in the polls, but many wondered what they did to deserve it. They were justified when the Wildcats started Big East play by going 2-3, losing to Marquette, Louisville and Connecticut while beating Seton Hall and St. John’s, the former in overtime. The first big win came in the last game ever played at the Spectrum again Pittsburgh, which may have been a foreshadowing.
But the Wildcats weren’t done surviving. As the NCAA Tournament began, they got a major test from two-time Patriot League champion American. They trailed the Eagles at the half, before coming alive early in the second half to take the game over. Two blowouts later, it was Pittsburgh again, this time standing in the way of the Final Four.
In this game, the Wildcats survived everything, perhaps aided by what the program has been through under Wright up to that point. They survived losing an early lead, the product of a big game from Panther forward Sam Young. They survived foul trouble that mounted in the second half, that which helped the Panthers seem on the verge of taking the game over as DeJuan Blair got going. In fact, even as foul trouble mounted, the Wildcats still led for a lot of the game, but there was surely no Wildcat fan who felt secure.
They survived clutch plays once again from Levance Fields, who has stung opponents so many times. It started with a pass to Blair for an uncontested layup to make it a two-point game. The Wildcats survived an errant long pass that surely had fans wondering if they threw the game away, especially when Fields sank two free throws to tie the game in the final seconds. And they survived a near five-second call at the beginning of the play they’ll be talking about for a long time on the Main Line.
And after Scottie Reynolds, himself a survivor on the court as he struggled mightily last weekend, made the layup with less than a second to go, there was one more thing left. Fields got up a three-quarter court heave that he probably didn’t get off before the buzzer, and though right on line, it missed high.
With that, the Wildcats had done the ultimate act of surviving and advancing.
Wright has completed a long road himself, from that of a “hanger-on”, as he described himself in 1985, to the very decorated head coach of the program now. And the Big East has come full circle as well, with many feeling 1985 was the greatest year in the conference, but now left to debate if 2008-09 tops it.
With Saturday night, the long road to the Final Four, from the NIT bids to the injuries to the near-plane crash to the tough loss in the Elite 8 three years earlier, was complete. The unlikely Final Four team had punched its ticket to Detroit, with the guy who led the last team on the Main Line to the promised land right there to see it and being one of the first people Wright ran to after the game was over.
